Monday, 19 April 2010

Charlie Brown’s hell and Transport for London

The Charlie Brown’s roundabout in South Woodford is a classic example of London’s suburban motoring hell. The car comes first and pedestrians have no crossing facilities at all. Further up the road there’s an underpass under the North Circular which regularly floods in winter, and a few years ago a schoolgirl who couldn’t use the underpass was run down and killed while attempting to cross the North Circular.

Drivers approach the roundabout like lunatics, pedestrians have to wait forever to cross each arm of the approach roads, and cyclists are rarely seen, mainly because Redbridge is a cycling hell, as you’d expect from a Conservative administration. No matter how bad Labour or Liberal Democrat councils are, the car-insane pedestrian-hostile, public transport-hating Conservatives are always much, much worse.

PEOPLE living next to one of Redbridge's busiest road junctions have demanded an end to their long wait for safety improvements.

Residents in South Woodford have fought to get extra pedestrian crossings and traffic calming measures installed at Charlie Brown's roundabout for more than a decade and have now called on Transport for London (TfL) to set a date for the work to be carried out.

Naturally that toxic anti-walking anti-cycling outfit known as Transport for London has given residents the brush-off:

A TfL spokesman said: "There were no accidents involving pedestrians at Charlie Brown's roundabout in Redbridge in the past three years

[a classically fatuous and meaningless piece of reasoning because few pedestrians or cyclists would ever want to go near this terrifying and lethal roundabout except out of extreme necessity]

but in October 2007 preliminary investigations took place to establish whether signalised crossings should be installed to improve pedestrian access.

"It was calculated that the total cost of the works would have exceeded £3m and unfortunately funding is not available to proceed.

[That’s right. Billions of pounds are available for ‘improvements’ for drivers but pedestrians and cyclists are denied even crumbs.]